Another Movie Guy?: “Wendy and Lucy,” etc.

Welcome to “Another Movie Guy?”! I review recent new releases, and then mention similar movies worth checking out. If all goes according to plan, you’ll have some new additions to your Netflix queue. Or someone with whom you can angrily disagree.

I have friends who absolutely will not watch a movie if there is a scene where someone treats a dog cruelty. With their soulful eyes, dogs in particular are often the centerpiece of the most emotionally wrenching scenes. I think this is because it’s so easy to project emotion on something that can’t speak for itself. Kellly Reichardt, the writer/director of Wendy and Lucy, knows this. Her subject is a young man and her canine companion, but don’t think that this is a cloying, indie equivalent of Marley and Me. No scene strains for affect, and the quietly observant direction gives you time to appreciate the relationship between these two.

Wendy (Michelle Williams) is “just passing through” a small town in the Pacific Northwest. She has only $525 to her name, and is struggling to reach Alaska. There is no more dog food, so Wendy walks to the local market, and ties her mutt Lucy to a bike rack. Of course, with only so much money left, Wendy steals the dog food, not realizing that a store employee is spying on her the entire time. She’s caught red-handed, and sent to jail. Lucy is not at the bike rack when she returns, so Wendy spends the next day trying to find her friend.

The simplicity of the storytelling is the movie’s strongest asset. Wendy has no context except for the few days we spend with her. There are tidbits that we learn – she is from Indiana, for example, and she frustrates her sister back home. Even with a lack of information, the audience learns plenty about Wendy, due in no small part to Michelle Williams’ fine performance. She consistently hits the right notes, and her moments of despair are never over the top. Wendy is simply determined. She understands that to dwell would cause her to lose hope, something which helps her establish a rapport with the audience. During her search, she encounters strangers who, in a way, are systemic of our crumbling economy. They act as if they’ve been forgotten. Some take pity on Wendy, some abuse what little power they have, and they all lead a meager existence, wandering through a small town as life passes by. The director films these characters with restraint and dignitty. With her cinematographer, Reichardt also gets some gorgeous shots of the Cascade mountains.
Wendy and Lucy is like a good short story. I guess this should come as no surprise, as Reichardt adapted the screenplay from Jonathon Raymond’s fiction. On one level, it really is just about a girl and her dog. What elevates the movie is the empathy of the observant camera, and Williams’ understated performance. Every scene feels plausible, giving the movie a deep emotional impact. Even the bittersweet final scene, which could have been handled poorly, hits all the right notes. I have seen plenty of movies about people and their pets, but I don’t remember the last time one has moved me so deeply.

Here are other deliberately paced movies reqiure some degree of patience:

Old Joy. Before Wendy Lucy, Kelly Reichardt made Old Joy, another movie adapted from Raymond. Mark lives a quite life with his wife and is expecting a baby. His friend Kurt unexpectedly arrives, and suggests that they go on overnight hike to nearby hot springs. Mark reluctantly accepts, and hints that there is a reason he hasn’t seen his friend in years. The two go on a trip, take in the scenery, talk for a while, and go home. Really that’s all that happens, which is why a movie like this is difficult to summarize. Kurt and Mark both seem wistful and a little sad, feelings that Reichardt consciously invokes. You get the sense that they both yearn for something from their past. Kurt doesn’t have a family, so he seems far less together than his friend. He uses the kind of hippiespeak that infuriates an east-coast city slicker like myself. He’s aloof and annoying, and I’m not sure whether it’s intentional. Yet for a movie with subtle character development and virtually no story, it is still engaging. If you liked Wendy and Lucy, be surre to check this one out. And don’t worry, at a mere 76 minutes, Old Joy does not overstay its welcome.

Shotgun Stories. For a title that promises violence, Shotgun Stories is surprisingly subdued. It focuses on two unhappy families who share the same father. Brothers Son, Boy, and Kid (yes those are their names) remember their father as an abusive SOB. So when the old man dies, Son feels the only appropriate reaction is to deliver a bitter eulogy and spit on the casket. The old man’s new family, who fondly remember the deceased, don’t take kindly to Son’s behavior. Thus begins a bitter blood feud. Don’t be fooled – the movie’s violence is not stylized, and little bloodletting happens on screen. More often than not, we see the consequences of the violence; namely, how bitter, lonely men with few prospects question their actions and deal with bloody repercussions. Writer/director Jeff Nichols has more in common with Terrence Malick than he does Quentin Tarantino. Terse dialog is the only thing that punctuates the long silences of this movie. Shotgun Stories is not thrilling, but does an uncanny job of presenting a specific mood, and how violence might escalate with believable small-town characters.

Werckmeister Harmonies. Ok, I’ve talked about a lot of slow movies in this column, but this one takes the cake. It’s two and a half hours long, it’s black and white, it’s in Hungarian, it has a threadbare plot, and the average shot is four minutes long. You still with me? Good. Béla Tarr directed this creepy movie about a sideshow invading a small town. Before the visitors arrive, there is an amazing eleven minute take in which Janos, the closest thing the movie has to a protagonist, forces drunks to enact his vision of the apocalypse. Clearly this is a group who are in serious need of entertainment. With its mysterious leader known only as “The Prince,” the sideshow finally arrives. The show’s centerpiece is a giant whale, a creature whose presence inspires awe in the townsfolk. We wisely never see a shot of the whale in its entirety, which helps the viewer get a sense of how others regard the creature. There seems to be a supernatural force at work here. Everyone begins to revolt, and town devolves into a state of chaos. The movie has an amazing style – Tarr, like Kubrick, has the patience to orchestrate long, gliding takes that all but hypnotize the viewer. If you allow youself get rapt up in such an unusual movie, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

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“Ratmansky’s extraordinary musical sense... wins out.”—Russia’s Kommersantwith the Kennedy Center Opera House OrchestraRomeo and Juliet“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to

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“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to its name with its latest production of Romeo and Juliet choreographed by former Artistic Director Alexei Ratmansky, one of today’s hottest, most visionary, and most in-demand dance-makers. The Bolshoi Ballet is celebrated for its daringly athletic and highly theatrical style of ballet. It’s been nearly six years since the mighty company last performed for us, and this time the Bolshoi’s incomparable stars immerse themselves in Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy of star-crossed love.

Danced to Prokofiev’s richly cinematic score, Ratmansky’s version shines with the characteristic style that audiences have come to adore from him: quick steps, vigorous lifts, and surprising dashes of humor. Leveraging the Bolshoi dancers’ dynamic range, his staging feels at once both epic and human, a sweeping spectacle that more deeply and poetically explores the young couple’s burning attraction to each other amidst the suffocating circumstances of family feuding in 14th-century Verona. When the Bolshoi tours in 2020, Washington is the only U.S. city lucky enough to host Romeo and Juliet. Don’t miss this remarkable opportunity!

Violent Femmes 10th studio album, HOTEL LAST RESORT, resides among the groundbreaking band’s finest work, simultaneously refining and redefining their one-of-a-kind take on American music, mingling front porch folk, post punk, spiritual jazz, country blues, avant garde minimalism and golden age rock ‘n’ roll into something still altogether their own. Founded and fronted of course by singer/guitarist Gordon Gano and acoustic bass guitarist Brian Ritchie, the Milwaukee-born combo remains as warm, wise and weird as ever before, with such new favorites as “Another Chorus” and “Everlasting You” continuing to mine the vast range of ideas, melodic complexity and organic sonic craftsmanship that has characterized the band’s body of work since their landmark self-titled 1983 debut.

Formed in 1977, X quickly established themselves as one of the best bands in the first wave of LA’s flourishing punk scene; becoming legendary leaders of a punk generation. Featuring vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer DJ Bonebrake, their debut 45 was released on the seminal Dangerhouse label in 1978, followed by seven studio albums released from 1980-1993. Over the years, the band has released several critically acclaimed albums, topped the musical charts with regularity and performed their iconic hits on top television shows such as Letterman and American Bandstand. X’s first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift are ranked by Rolling Stone among the top 500 greatest albums of all time. The band continues to tour with the original line-up fully intact. In 2017, the band celebrated their 40th yearanniversary in music with a Grammy Museum exhibit opening, a Proclamation from the City of Los Angeles and being honored at a Los Angeles Dodgers game where Exene threw out the first pitch and John Doe sang the National Anthem. In 2020, X celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Los Angeles.

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To introduce the new project, her first full-length mixtape and release on XL, Yaeji has shared a new animated music video for the lead single “WAKING UP DOWN.” It’s also been announced that this Summer Yaeji will perform live across North America and Europe in which she’ll debut an all-new live show featuring dancers, original choreography and new stage production.

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the council estates of Northampton, and for it to advocate for community in a country increasingly mired in fear and insularity. Three years since the phrase first appeared in his breakout track ‘Jiggle’, Tyron Frampton presents his incendiary debut ‘Nothing Great About Britain’.

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Ed O’Brien never planned to make a solo record. As guitarist with Radiohead, who over almost three decades and nine albums have established themselves as one of the most innovative

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But suddenly a switch was flicked and the songs came pouring out of him. That creative surge resulted in an album of rediscovery and adventure by O’Brien under the moniker EOB that deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism.

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Join LabX and the Cultural Programs at The National Academy of Sciences as they collaborate with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center to host a hands-on activity day for families with

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This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different

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This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different from my previous records, and I struggled to figure out how to do that. I realized that because the way I listened to music had changed, I had to change the way I wrote music, as well. I was listening less and less to albums and more and more to individual songs, songs from all over the place, every few days finding a new one that seemed to have a special energy. I thought that if I could make an album full of songs that had a special energy, each one unique and different in its vision, then that would be a good thing.Andrew, Ethan, Seth and I started going into the studio to record songs that had more finished structures and jam on ideas that didn’t. Then I would mess with the recordings until I could see my way to a song. Most of the time on this album was spent shuttling between my house and Andrew’s, who did a lot of the mixing on this. He comes from an EDM school of mixing, so we built up sample-heavy beat-driven songs that could work to both of our strengths.

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Growing up in suburban New Jersey, 23-year-old singer, songwriter and producer Jeremy Zucker has always been surrounded by music. In 2015, he released his first EP as a freshman at

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